by T. C. Farren
‘Tomorrow.’ Janeé stands up and crashes my plate onto the tray. ‘Do you want to come and play Sleeping with the Enemy?’
I stare helplessly.
‘You don’t know how? I can teach you.’
I scrub at my scalp, use my affliction to turn down her kindness. Allergy is easier to mime anyhow than, Sorry, but if I did I will piss on the sofa every time one of us pulls a trigger.
Just then, we hear a volley of little bombs, muffled by acres of stainless steel. Janeé grins.
‘Someone’s already up there. It must be Tamba.’ She trundles to the door. ‘See you tomorrow, Malachi.’
I smile at her wryly. I have two mothers, it seems. Cecilia who gave birth to me, and a big Xhosa cook who would forsake me any day for a War Console game.
* * *
I scuttle from the canteen, knock hard on the door of Olivia’s laboratory.
‘Ja?’
Olivia bends over a long plastic sleeve of pink fluid. Blue bruises of optimism hang beneath her tired eyes. ‘Malachi?’ she says, surprised.
I hook the top digits of my fingers, scrabble at the air around my head. I touch my bottom lip, show an imaginary pill going in.
‘Itchy head?’
I nod, curl my hands into the shape of a dish. Mime the action of eating.
‘The fish!’
No, not the fish. But Olivia whips a drawer open, breathing heavily. She digs inside it. ‘How is your breathing, Malachi?’
I stroke my throat, put up a hand to reassure her there is no swelling.
‘The fish,’ she repeats while she fishes in the drawer of glass bottles and silver wrappings. She snaps a yellow pill from its bubble pack. ‘Take this. Quickly.’
I drop it in my mouth. Swallow it. I want to explain to Olivia that the fish was mother’s milk. It was that stupid red syrup, but Olivia is the last person in the world who should ever see my Samsung.
‘Is your throat feeling tight?’
I shake my head. Five plastic sleeves lie on the counter pasted with white stickers, neatly printed, Zymocticyllin. 200 ml per mouth.
Olivia is watching me anxiously. ‘I think I should call Meirong.’
I wave a casual hand, smiling.
‘Malachi.’ There is a threatening note in Olivia’s voice. ‘You need to be fine for tomorrow.’
I walk backwards, show Olivia I am perfectly coordinated, thank you. I turn at the door, smiling to quell her worry that I might die of anaphylactic shock and sabotage harvest day. I wave cheerily, glide down the corridor, an old-fashioned actor exiting stage right.
* * *
It feels like I have never in my life been so happy. My itch is completely cured by the antihistamine. I whistle in the shower, Bayira’s song from Saturday.
I stop suddenly. The warm water pours down. I had no idea I could whistle without a tongue.
I can whistle perfectly, even with water running between my lips. Astonishing. I giggle to myself. Perhaps an unforeseen effect of Janeé’s frying grease.
I hide my stolen phone beneath my pillow. Drop both key cards on the cabinet, climb into my sleeping shorts which smell of fake lavender. The antihistamine, I think, has sent me flying. I set my alarm for ten minutes before midnight, put myself to bed among a profusion of purple flowers, humming Bayira’s tune.
I will see Vicki at midnight.
My mind travels to her bellybutton. This is safe, isn’t it? The bellybutton has nothing to do with the skeleton. It is miles from the saxophonist’s knobs of her vertebrae, a different creature entirely from her pretty patella draped in pliant knee-skin. Her bellybutton is just a keepsake, a souvenir from the woman who carried her for nine months, her baby skull knocking against a soft, sloping cervix.
Is a woman’s cervix smooth and buttery, or is it spongy, I wonder? I see the dark moss at the entrance to the mermaid’s cave. Feel my penis rise up like a medieval weapon. I turn onto my stomach, but it digs into the mattress like it wants to lift me up and go and seek Vicki’s pink reproductive parts.
Shame stabs me in the soft centre of my pelvis.
Would my mother be ashamed of me?
I thrash the pillow fiercely. No! Cecilia would want her son to be a full-blooded human, not bomb his manhood out of existence. I stroke my cheek against the pillow, let it comfort me. I slide my hand into my shorts. I want to lick Vicki’s bellybutton, thank her mother for carrying her. I want to tickle the globule of skin with my imaginary tongue so she buckles towards me, gives me her breasts. I want to take her nipple between my lips, let the flesh touch the roof of my mouth. I caress my pitted penis, let it grow in response to my delicious gentleness. I want to feed on her unloved abundance, suck her feminine flesh until a surprising richness floods her bony chest, throbs through her guitar frets, passes in ecstatic stop-starts through her knife notches until she is free to be a groaning, grown woman, unharmed by man or metal. I touch my scarred penis, stroke it to shocking rigidity. I want to slip it into her mermaid’s cave, feel the slippery velvet swell around it, drive to the edge, sink and lift, sink and lift, rhythmic, until the world cannot hold us and we fall, we fly, we shatter in blazing waves that drown everything we have ever known, our very birth, the fact that we are perfect.
I fall into a blissful, sticky sleep.
* * *
I wake still holding her lush hills that guide me back to time. Who am I?
Where do I live?
A helicraft throbs somewhere above me. I am lying in a metal rig beneath a damp, sticky sheet. I smile, wrap myself tightly in it. I am in love with Vicki.
The helicraft engine slows, switches off. The extra surgeons are here. Poor Shikorina. Poor Lolie. I can’t bring myself to feel sorry for Angus, the rapist. I listen for the Dragonfly to load up the solo sailor and fly her away to the best medical care on earth. I listen for an hour and ten minutes, but all I hear are muted detonations of outdated war-game weapons. I fall asleep again worrying about the dehydrated sailor.
Why? I ask the giant, who must have a better view than me from my tiny bed. Why have they not left yet?
* * *
My alarm plays the violin gracefully in my sleep. I smell the sex on my fingers as I fumble for my timepiece. Tamba mutters in his sleep. I sit up, wide awake. Did they take Frances during my dead delta stage of sleep? Please let her be on a stretcher in the night sky somewhere, please.
I undress quietly, leave a dry snail trail from the first orgasm I have had since I was a teenager.
Thank you, Vicki.
Will the hall be bright or dimly lit at night? Should I wear clean clothes? No, she will notice. She might tease me. I pull on today’s white outfit, try to smooth the creases. I love the feel of my own hands on my body.
I love myself, Mother. Now that I love Vicki.
I steal my phone from beneath my pillow, slide my red lanyard over my head. I pick up my shoes and tiptoe to the bathroom. Sneak the light on like a thief. I inspect for sleep in the corner of my eyes. Like a lover before a date, I swallow some toothpaste. I am ready for my midnight inspection.
* * *
The egg-yolk atmosphere of the rig has disappeared. The corridor glows with a ghostly white light, just like in a vampire movie.
I enter the hall, breathless, my hands awkwardly empty. As my eyes get used to the misty white light, I am arrested by the sight of thirty-nine prisoners curled on their sides. Far, far beneath us, I hear the womb-like lap of water against the legs of the rig. As I pad in, my rubber soles make the faintest of squeaks. How do they sleep with that sharp mesh cutting into them? Their snores travel the airspace at different heights, keep careful flightpaths of soft engine sounds. I creep closer. In this light, Vicki’s skin glows an opaque white. Her hips sink towards the sea, rise up to the perfect, pale curve of her buttocks. Her long hair falls away from her face, revealing the girlish naiveté of the husband killer. To me she is a sleeping beauty painted in creamy cow’s milk.
Samuel sits up slowly, bewildered. ‘I
s it morning?’ He wipes his face with his whole hand as a lion cub might.
I shake my head, protective of the waking cub. I slide out my phone, stroke its volume to soft. ‘Just a quick check. Sorry. I need to see your fingers and teeth.’
Samuel gives his head a little shake, like he can’t believe he has woken into this grotesque medical nightmare. He flattens his hands against the mesh. I check his fingers. Samuel grimaces obediently, shows me his teeth.
‘Thank you,’ my African voicebox quotes me in a whisper. I move towards Eulalie’s snore.
‘Malachi, wait,’ Samuel says. ‘I’ve been counting the days. It’s harvest time, isn’t it?’
‘Tomorrow,’ I type.
There is a plea in his voice. ‘Are they starting with me?’
Eulalie stops snoring, half opens her eyelids. I shake my head, happy to reassure him. ‘No. With Shikorina. A crew-member needs new lungs for her child.’
I violate confidentiality with every letter I type but someone needs to treat these people like humans. Samuel hangs his head in relief. Eulalie stares at me in the horror-movie light, still curled in her foetal position. At this angle, her nose is a long, thin ridge. Her eyes gather up the loose skin beneath them.
Samuel sighs. ‘Maybe it’s worse to wait. What do you think, Eulalie?’
Eulalie smiles ruefully. I bend quickly, check her teeth. I see only signs of old-age shuffling, no injuries.
The witch sits up slowly, hugs her knees. ‘Malachi?’ Her old voice cracks the hush of sleep in the room.
Vicki’s eyelids flutter. I want to go close and press them shut. Say, Sshh. Sleep.
The witch’s voice is too hoarse to tame into a whisper. ‘I saw a murder tonight.’
The word strikes a gong in the minds of all the sleeping prisoners. Murder is their other name after all, isn’t it?
‘A girl with hair so white. And she was thirsty. So thirsty.’
The air dries my open mouth.
Eulalie’s old skin pleats her forehead. ‘Do you know who this is?’
A metal bolt pierces my chest. I type with shaking fingers, ‘A sailor girl they picked up. They were meant to fly her out tonight.’ I turn to Vicki, type urgently, ‘But I haven’t heard them leaving.’
A multitude of people shake their sleepy heads.
‘Who killed her, Eulalie?’ Samuel urges.
Eulalie presses her fingers to the crook of her old, old arm. ‘It was a needle. Her father showed me. They put her to sleep.’
I cry out like some wild jungle bird. ‘That’s not right!’ my Samsung bursts out.
Vicki chuckles bitterly. ‘What’s right on this rig, Malachi?’
Her irises are soft caterpillars, rolling inwards.
My fingers fly faster than my brain can make sense. ‘They are murderers. The girl was sick!’
Eulalie shakes her head as if she too saw the girl’s sorrow, her third-degree sunburn. ‘Poor Frances.’
Suddenly I doubt my confidence in the old hag. ‘Definitely dead?’
The truth is a slow, glowing bullet in her grey eyes. She shoots it gently at me. ‘Never dead.’ She reminds me, ‘Remember Cecilia.’
Vicki crosses her arms over her breasts, hides the succulent tips. ‘How old was she?’
‘Nineteen,’ I type.
‘Poor thing,’ Madame Sophie groans behind me. She is rumpled after four hours of sleep on a wire bed with no blanket, no mattress, no time to comb the knots from her hair.
I type to thirty-nine witnesses, ‘Raizier lied to us. I’m going to ask about Frances.’ I shove my phone back in my pocket, hurry towards the entrance.
‘Malachi! Wait!’ Vicki calls after me.
‘Watch out, Malachi!’ Samuel shouts.
Why these people should care about me is one unfathomable, deep-sea mystery.
* * *
I run in my rubber sneakers, crash into our living quarters. I flip the phone into my fingers, jab at the screen: ‘Is the solo sailor dead?’
‘Huh? What?’
‘Did they kill her?’
‘What the fuck.’ Tamba switches on his lamp, peers at me through swollen eyelids. ‘I thought you couldn’t write.’
‘I lied, like you. Your father is Doctor Mujuru.’
Tamba sounds like he is having an asthma attack. ‘Who told you?’
‘You did, you idiot.’
‘Huh?’
‘Your microphone.’
‘Jesus.’ He presses his fingers into his eye sockets.
‘I heard they killed Frances,’ I type.
‘Fuck. Where did you hear this stuff?’
‘One of the prisoners is psychic.’
Tamba stares at me like I am severely mentally handicapped. ‘They’re lying.’
‘What did they do with the giant?’
‘What?’
‘Number fifteen. His body.’
Tamba sighs, falls back on his bed. He watches water churning somewhere on the ceiling. ‘They took out his stem-cell heart. They took out his teeth. They threw him in the shark pit.’
I recoil with horror, force my fingers to ask, ‘His teeth for ID?’
Tamba nods. ‘In case someone wants proof.’
The giant guessed it! The judge was right.
Tamba jerks up, watches my phone like it is a lethal weapon. His green streak pulses madly in the soft lamplight. ‘You’ve been talking to the subjects?’
I nod my head defiantly.
Tamba springs to his feet. ‘You’re not supposed to communicate! I’m going to report you.’ He snatches for his Samsung.
I swipe it out of reach, swing my back to him. I type quickly, ‘You gave me the phone, you showed me the settings.’
I don’t get the chance to type the rest. Tamba is backing away, pleading, ‘Don’t tell Meirong. Please. You don’t know anything.’
I jab my keys. ‘Tell me.’
Tamba sits down on his bed. ‘Six months ago I was in California State Prison for doing coke.’ He begs me, ‘I had no money to buy safety, no toothpaste . . .’
I stare, incredulous. Does he expect me to care about his teeth?
‘I was dead meat. My father pulled me out just in time. They would have raped me.’
I glance involuntarily at his penis. He covers his genitals as if I might bite them.
‘I’m going straight back there if I fuck up.’ He slumps down on his bed, hangs his dreadlocks. ‘My father’s sick of me.’ He pleads shamelessly, ‘Give me the phone, please. I’ll shut up about it.’
‘I won’t use it again,’ I type. Toss his phone into his side of the cabinet.
Tamba dives after it, ‘Give it!’
I launch at the cabinet, grab my yellow Pep Stores phone I stowed there on Monday. I wave it in the air. Tamba jumps, tries to wrench it from me, but I hang on to it with all my strength. Tamba has the powerful fingers of a computer geek. He tears the phone free and leaps onto his mattress. I flail wildly for it but Tamba bounds to the floor and beats the phone against the metal wall. It shatters easily. He stamps on the pieces with his bare feet, again and again, splintering them.
I shrink away from him. What if he bleeds?
No. The yellow shards of plastic are just a tiny accident at his feet. I see no blood.
I kneel down, pick up the pieces before he can see that he has just wrecked a cheap yellow Nokia, not a ten-thousand-rand Samsung.
Tamba watches me, fascinated. ‘You’ll never fix it.’
I drop the plastic pieces in the toilet, flush them into the sea.
Tamba sinks onto his bed, rubs his sensitive feet. ‘Stupid to do that without shoes,’ he says wryly.
I shake out my white duvet, as if this might restore order to the brutal world. Throw myself under it. Tamba is too sorry for himself to notice I’m still wearing my shoes. He switches off the bedside light.
‘Aaagh,’ he groans in the stainless-steel silence. In the pitch dark, I hear the soft slam of his head against the pillow. ‘I wo
uldn’t be surprised if –’ A slow wave of grief breaks over him. He sobs almost silently – for himself or for Frances I can’t be certain. I lie against the metal wall, wait for Doctor Mujuru’s only child to cry himself to sleep.
* * *
When Tamba’s tonsils start to ululate gently against his tongue, I sit up in tiny increments, slide my hand slowly into the cabinet. My fingers close on Tamba’s unblemished Samsung. I slide it out, press my thumb over the tiny glass circle at its snout. Find the torch button on the right. I stifle the light with my thumb, use the skin-coloured glow to find the pink lanyard on the cabinet. I pinch it with my thumb and forefinger, lift it like a sleeping snake. Meirong’s key card to the deck.
I stand up in slow motion, my heart banging like a midnight thief’s. Tamba whimpers like a puppy chasing dream rabbits. I tiptoe from the room in crumpled white, the Valentino lover of Vicki, the husband killer.
* * *
I drop down the three unnecessary steps, slink past the canteen, past the atmosphere of two women sleeping. My rubber soles exhale, deliver me with subtle squeaks to the exit of the maintenance wing. The door to the rig’s thoroughfare cries like a house cat. I ease it slowly closed. It meows spitefully. I listen for footsteps. Nothing.
This passage is also shrouded in misty white light. I take off on my toes, run up the first flight, spin on the landing. I climb up, up the metal tree. My sense of conviction powers my legs, swells my lung capacity. I race up the stairs, draw oxygen easily. Within minutes I reach the final door to the sea. I lift the pink lanyard, listen for the click.
I step into the gigantic night, broken wide open by a multitude of stars and planets.
* * *
The deck lights are all off, as Meirong has ordered. The moon is almost full, only slightly misshapen. It kisses the wings of the sleeping Dragonfly, lights each blade tenderly. It drips golden effulgence down its white walls, strokes the tail of the beast as a cloud moves aside. The moon gazes into the empty windscreen, besotted, watching the creature sleep. Miles above me, the figure of a man stands sentry in the round surveillance tower. Romano.
I peer along the deck towards the girl sailor’s makeshift jail. The storeroom door is wide open. I steal along the façade of the building. As I reach the door, the moon reveals the white spectre of the solo sailor’s bed. I slip into the room. Her crumpled sheet is twisted like an intestine. Was there a struggle?